The light in the room was dim, filtered through soot-stained curtains and the overcast sky beyond the cracked window. The rain hadn’t stopped, tapping lightly against the roof as it had the night before. Irina sat beside the bed, her knees pressed together, a bloodied cloth wrapped around one hand and a bandage roll in the other.

  The man on the mattress was still unconscious. His breathing had steadied sometime during the night, but his body had remained still. She had checked his pulse more than once, just to be sure. He was stable—but only just.

  She had cut the remnants of his uniform away to get a better look at his injuries. The head wound was deep, though not fatal. Bruising lined his ribs and shoulders, and his hands were scraped and swollen. But what caught her attention—what made her pause—were the scars.

  There were many, far, far too many. They weren’t fresh, as some were faded, years old by the look of them, and cleanly healed. Others were ragged and uneven, and there were signs of field dressings done under pressure. Gunshots. Cuts. Burns. Some ran along the bone. Others looked like they’d come from shrapnel. He was young, not much older than twenty, maybe twenty-five at most, but his body looked like it had survived a dozen lifetimes.

  She wrapped his shoulder slowly, eyes lingering on the rough texture of a long, deep scar running across his side. When the last bandage was secured, she sat back and exhaled through her nose. For a moment, she just watched him, as if trying to decide whether he was a threat, or something else entirely.

  She stood up and collected what was left of the medical supplies—most of it taken from the motorcycle’s sidecar. There wasn’t much left now. One roll of clean cloth. A few tablets. Gauze that had seen better days. She tucked them into a tin box and stepped out of the room.

  The stairs creaked as she made her way down, one hand trailing the worn banister. The farmhouse had held together better than most in the area. Her father had reinforced it before the war worsened—solid beams, thick doors, boarded cellar. It wasn’t much, but it had saved their lives more than once.

  Her brother sat in the corner of the kitchen, knees drawn to his chest, arms wrapped tightly around them. He didn’t look up when she entered. His dark hair hung in wet strands across his forehead, and his clothes were two sizes too large.

  Irina placed the tin on the counter and knelt beside him.

  “He’s still breathing,” she said quietly.

  The boy nodded once, but said nothing.

  She touched his shoulder. “You did well, Leon. You stayed quiet like I told you.”

  He nodded again, slower this time. His eyes never left the floor.

  Irina looked over at the fireplace—nothing but ash now—and then toward the boarded windows. She could still hear distant artillery, faint but steady. The front hadn’t moved very far.

  “We’ll leave soon,” she said, more to herself than to him. “Before anyone comes looking.”

  Leon didn’t respond. He just pulled his knees in a little tighter.

  ***

  The sunlight filtered through the white curtains as the man found himself standing in a kitchen. Everything seemed hazy, and whenever he tried to focus on something—the table, the counter, the window—the more out of place it seemed. The walls weren’t quite straight, the light flickered unnaturally, and the corners of the room blurred like smudged paint.

  As he tried to make sense of it, a voice drifted through the stillness. It was a woman’s voice—soft, calm, and impossibly familiar. It didn’t come from a specific direction. It simply filled the space around him, as though it belonged in every corner of the room. Despite the haze and confusion, the sound brought a strange comfort.

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  “You’re quiet today,” the voice said. “What’s on your mind?”

  He turned slowly toward the sink, where a figure stood with her back to him. She moved with quiet ease, drying her hands on a towel, the rhythm of the motion oddly soothing. He couldn’t see her face, but the way she moved made something in his chest ache.

  “You always think too much,” she continued. “That head of yours never stops moving.”

  He tried to speak, to say something in return, but his mouth wouldn’t open. The air around him thickened, like he was underwater. He stepped forward, but the room seemed to stretch with him. No matter how close he got, she stayed just out of reach.

  Then she turned slightly and knelt down to his level. Her hand reached toward him—not to grab or restrain, but just to rest gently on his shoulder.

  “Michael.”

  The sound of the name echoed in his mind, dragging him out of the warmth and quiet as his eyes snapped open. Pain greeted him immediately. It bloomed from the side of his head and spread across his ribs and shoulders in a slow, heavy wave. He inhaled sharply, the breath catching in his throat. His body felt like it had been dragged through gravel and left to bake in the sun. Every muscle ached. Every joint protested the action.

  He tried to sit up, but the moment he shifted, the pain flared sharper in his side. A groan escaped him as he dropped back against the mattress, his breath shallow and uneven. He blinked slowly, forcing his eyes to adjust to the dim light. The ceiling above him was made of uneven wood panels, stained by age and damp with moisture. A curtain hung over a nearby window, barely stirring with the breeze slipping through the cracked frame.

  His gaze drifted across the room. A tin box sat on a stool beside the bed, its lid propped open with a bloodied cloth hanging out of it. Nearby, a small bowl of murky water and a strip of torn fabric gave off the sour, metallic scent of dried blood. Someone had cleaned and bandaged him, but who?

  Almost as if hearing his thoughts, the door to the room creaked open and the young woman from the barn stepped inside. Her eyes landed on him—and widened. In that instant, the basin in her hands slipped from her grip. It hit the wooden floor with a sharp clatter, cold water splashing across the floorboards as the bowl rolled once before settling near the bed.

  She froze in place, her breath caught, hands still half-raised as if she might catch what had already fallen. He didn’t move. The pain in his body was too great to move, leaving him effectively paralyzed. In the end, they both stared at each other in silence, like deer staring down the barrel of a rifle.

  “S-so, you’re awake?” the woman said, her voice unsteady and quieter than he expected. It wasn’t fear exactly, but caution, like she wasn’t sure what kind of man he might be now that his eyes were open. She didn’t move from her spot near the door.

  He winced, the pressure in his ribs tightening as he tried to shift slightly. The effort cost him more than it was worth, but he managed a faint nod. His voice came out dry and raspy.

  “Yeah… I guess I am,” he said, pausing to catch his breath. “You… patched me up?”

  The woman nodded once. “Bandages were in the sidecar. Figured I could at least stop you from bleeding out.”

  “Thank you,” he grunted, then hesitated. “What’s your name, if I may ask?”

  She didn’t answer right away. Her eyes narrowed slightly, as if trying to decide whether it was safe to tell him. Then, after a beat, she spoke.

  “Irina,” she said slowly. “Irina Schachner.”

  She glanced toward the bed, then back at him. “And you?”

  He opened his mouth to answer, but for a moment, nothing came. The name was there—it had been whispered in the dark before he woke, and now it sat on the edge of his tongue like something long forgotten. He swallowed hard and forced the word out.

  “Michael.”

  She said nothing at first, just gave a short nod as if filing it away. He didn’t offer a last name, and she didn’t press. The silence that followed wasn’t comfortable, but it wasn’t hostile either. More like two people trying to decide what came next after surviving the same fire.

  She stepped forward slowly, eyes never leaving him as she crouched to pick up the basin from the floor. Water had pooled around the wood near the bed, soaking into the floorboards. She didn’t bother wiping it up. Instead, she placed the bowl on the stool next to the tin and straightened her back with a quiet sigh.

  Michael watched her, unsure of what to say. He didn’t recognize her. He didn’t recognize the room. He barely recognized his own voice when he spoke. Every part of him still ached, but the fog in his mind was lifting in pieces. He had a name. That was something. More than he’d had the day before.

  “You were there,” he said finally. “In the barn.”

  Irina gave a nod, her expression unreadable. “You saved me,” she said, then paused. “And almost got yourself killed doing it.”

  “Would’ve been worse if I hadn’t,” Michael muttered, shifting slightly to ease the pressure on his ribs.

  Irina crossed her arms and looked at him again. This time there was less suspicion in her eyes—just tiredness. She wasn’t sure what he was, not yet, but she didn’t seem ready to throw him back into the mud either. Not while he was still breathing.

  Irina lingered a moment longer, as if debating whether to ask something else. Instead, she turned toward the door.

  “Try not to move too much,” she said over her shoulder. “You’ll tear open the stitches.”

  Michael didn’t reply, only gave a faint nod as she stepped out of the room and pulled the door shut behind her. Her footsteps faded down the stairs, replaced once more by the sound of rain tapping gently against the windows.

  He lay there in silence, staring at the ceiling, the pain in his ribs pulsing in time with his heartbeat. His mind drifted back to the voice in the dream, the name spoken so clearly.

  “Michael, huh?” he muttered to himself, the name strange and familiar all at once.

  The room offered no answer, only the quiet rhythm of the rain.